Brett Halliday - Kill All the Young Girls

He leaned forward, his knuckles on the sergeant’s desk. “That’s one way to look at it. Here’s another. If you don’t pick up that phone and start dialing, I can guarantee that I’ll have your ass.”

He gave it just the right emphasis. The sergeant said evasively, “Everybody’s entitled to his opinion.”

He bit the end of his mustache and reached for the phone. Dawn was just breaking. Getting through to the Miami Chief of Police, the Chief of Miami Beach Detectives, and the Dade County Sheriff took half an hour. As soon as the phone was free, Shayne called his lawyer. Another half hour passed while everyone gathered. Shayne, without the benefit of coffee, a drink, or a cigarette, explained the situation as far as it had gone. But this was clearly not the full story. There were still major gaps. To fill them in, he had to be turned loose to ask some more questions; and these had to be asked in his own way. They could all be present, but he wanted everybody to keep his mouth shut and watch and listen.

Peter Painter, the Chief of Detectives from Miami Beach and an old adversary of Shayne’s, burst out when he finished, “I’ll be damned if I’ll be party to any more goddamned tricks, Shayne! I’ve been burned too many times.”

Everybody tried to talk at once. Shayne broke in to ask to be excused until they decided who had first claim on his time and whether or not his proposition was acceptable. Painter, less dapper than usual because he had dressed in haste and left home without shaving, ordered him to sit exactly where he was and provide specific answers to some specific questions. Shayne smiled and stood up.

“If you want to charge me with anything, I’ll let my attorney advise me how to plead. I can see you’ll have to talk about it some more, but do I have to be here? I’ve been up all night, and I’m sleepy.”

After a lengthy wrangle, Shayne was shown into an empty cell. Lying down on a bare mattress, he set his wristwatch alarm for eight-thirty and fell asleep, hearing the angry rise and fall of voices in the outer room.

When the buzz of his watch woke him up, the argument was continuing. He was given a bowl of oatmeal and a cup of bad coffee. He took one taste of each.

“There’s one other murder I don’t think I told you about,” he said. “Keko Brannon, seven years ago, outside Los Angeles; and that’s the big one. It’s been wrapped up in so many layers that I can only think of one way to get through. Sure, it’s a trick, Painter, a dirty one. But I’ve never heard you object to dirty tricks except when they didn’t work.”

Shayne’s lawyer announced that he was advising his client to say nothing further. Unless he was released at once and given a chance to eat a decent breakfast, he was applying for a writ of habeas corpus and calling a press conference.

“Keko Brannon?” Painter said speculatively. “Murdered? I’d be interested to hear more about that.”

“We all would,” Will Gentry, Miami Police Chief, put in. “What are you asking, Mike — a couple of hours?”

“That’s all. I have to stop on the way to change my clothes. And can anybody loan me a bulletproof vest?”

“Why not?” Gentry said. “Come on, Petey. I watched a Brannon movie on TV last night; and if anybody murdered that girl, I want to know about it.”

Shayne drove in with Painter and Gentry and explained briefly what he wanted to try. Painter, predictably, didn’t like it. He kept railing against Shayne’s methods all the way downtown on the Airport Expressway, while Shayne was changing, while Gentry stopped off for a bulletproof garment which Shayne put on under his shirt.

“But why?” Painter said. “We’ll protect you. I don’t want anybody to shoot you until you’ve done some more talking. A stockholders’ meeting. Do you actually want us to believe somebody’s going to jump up and try to shoot you?”

“I want to get into the meeting without stopping any more bullets,” Shayne said. “The guy who was in charge of Mandy Pitt’s beating is named George. I didn’t get a good look at him. He was hanging around the St. A. last night waiting for me to show up. He’s probably given up by now, but let’s find out. Pretend you don’t know me.”

“And how I wish it were true,” Painter said fervently.

The sheriff had already reached the hotel, with the help of his lights and siren. Shayne lit a cigarette and entered the lobby. He bought a morning paper and checked the board to see which of the public rooms had been assigned to Consolidated-Famous. He picked a chair from which he could see the entire lobby and opened the paper. They had used a publicity still of Kate Thackera, a wire-service shot of Oscar Olson alighting from his private plane at the International Airport. Turkey Gallagher’s death and his attempt to sink Gasparilla’s ship hadn’t reached the front page. Shayne checked inside, but apparently Zion had been able to bottle up the story.

The plumbing supply convention was still in full swing, and the lobby was crowded with delegates between events as well as a few more ordinary tourists. One of the salesmen, wearing the conspicuous rubber plunger, turned toward Shayne and reached out as though to shake hands. There was something ungainly about the movement. Shayne didn’t actually see the gun, which was hidden beneath a convention program. He flicked his cigarette at the man’s eyes and kicked him beneath the left knee. The man shouted thinly; this was the same spot where Shayne had hit him the night before with a tire tool. Shayne caught the gun as the man passed him and shook it loose. An empty space had opened magically around Shayne’s chair.

“George what?” he said, maintaining contact.

“Strickland,” George said. “Damn you. I knew I should get out of town. I knew it.”

Shayne surrendered him to two of Painter’s detectives, and he continued to the elevator.

The Consolidated meeting, in the number two ballroom, had been called to order half an hour before. Larry Zion was at the microphone, and Shayne was astonished at the way he looked. When Shayne saw him last, he had been ready to drop. Now he radiated health and energy, like a commercial for geriatric vitamins. He seemed to be listening to fast, exciting music. He was beautifully dressed in a white suit with a red carnation, a red scarf. On the microphone stand, there were two bronze replicas of the little Motion Picture Academy statuette. He spoke between them, exuberantly, manipulating one of his marvellous long cigars. His walking cast was below eye level.

Other officials were lined up along the dais, and Shayne was surprised to see Oscar Olson among them. In contrast to Larry, he looked exhausted. His face was set in the haughty expression he considered sophisticated, as though he didn’t want anyone in the audience to think he was listening.

For some reason, Marcus Zion was missing.

Shayne moved down the side aisle until he spotted someone familiar. Evie Zion, smiling to herself, was knitting a dog’s sweater. He assumed that, like everyone else, she was acting. Things weren’t that good for anybody.

There was a vacant seat in her row. Zion, spotting Shayne, swallowed a word but caught himself quickly and hurried on with the good news. Shayne forced his way in and asked the people nearest Evie to move over. He hadn’t shaved, and there was a look on his face that said he had been in too many fights and arguments, and he hoped nobody would give him any trouble. They gathered their belongings and made room.

“I’ve been wondering about you,” Evie whispered.

“Where’s Marcus?”

“Well, Marcus.”

Zion stepped up the intensity of his delivery to draw the crowd’s attention from the little disturbance beneath him. He slid an acetate sheet into an overhead projector; and a picture of Gasparilla’s ship, under full sail, jumped onto the screen.